After snapping London's iconic Grosvenor House Hotel for 470 million pounds last year, diversified business conglomerate Sahara India is close to buying out a bunch of Marriott hotels in London   valued at 750 million pounds.

Though UAE-based Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, has emerged as the lowest bidder, Sahara has been identified as the preferred bidder. This is because RBS wanted to sell it to someone with hospitality experience and not to just someone as a strategic or financial investor as per a report in TOI by Piyush Pandey.

Interestingly, RBS - a troubled British bank which had to be bailed out by government - was the seller of Grosvenor House to Sahara last year. RBS took control of the properties after failure of talks to restructure loans it extended to the previous owner, a consortium that included Quinlan Private, the Irish real estate fund, and Delek, an Israeli property investor. The Marriott portfolio includes 42 four and five-star hotels in England, Scotland and Wales, with about 8,000 rooms. The hotels, which include the Marriott Country Hall on London's South Bank, are operated byMarriott International under a 30-year management agreement that commenced in 2006.

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